


Treading Water

by sundersea



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 18:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9621104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundersea/pseuds/sundersea
Summary: Kageyama Tobio's been underwater for so long





	

**Author's Note:**

> I sat up in bed in the middle of the night about a week ago as the seeds of this fic drifted into my mind and thought "I HAVE to write this. I HAVE to write this RIGHT NOW". So here we are. Sometimes things just take flight.

Set, spike, block. Rotate. Lose yourself in the familiar rhythm. Lose yourself in the screams of your teammates, in the thunk of the ball hitting your raw palm, in the sterile gym air.

One wrong toss and you’re under the surface.

***

The game officially starts with the coin toss, but for you it starts from the moment you hear rubber hitting the ground from beyond the double doors at the end of the hall. It’s a soothing noise and you allow yourself to breathe away the anxious palpitations you always get in the locker rooms.  
Hallways are good. Big and empty and easy. Nobody asking you stupid questions or saying things you don’t understand. But you can still hear the sound of rubber and even though the hallway is cool and quiet, you welcome the adrenaline starting to pulse through your veins.

The first moment in the gym is always overwhelming: the too-harsh lights pressing into your eyes, the overlapping shrieks from the coaches, the pop of water bottle lids—but your hands are already starting to tingle and twitch as the adrenaline turns into exhilaration. You’ve been playing volleyball since you could walk; the swirling chaos around you is as comforting as the hallway’s quiet simplicity. A ball rolls against your feet and you pick it up. The leather is firm and comforting between your fingers and you close your eyes to let the tunnel vision take over.

Set, catch, set.

You can hear your teammates’ laughter and god, you don’t understand how they’re so casual about something as momentous as a volleyball match. They’re clustered around the benches, a tight circle of blue purposely closed to you. You don’t understand this either. How can they ignore you, the setter, the one at the very helm of the court? You call out. Nobody responds. You grab someone’s arm and he snaps out an irate response. You snap back, twice as vicious because you hate the way your excitement drains into a seething mass of anger and shame.

You don’t understand.

No, you’re the only one who understands.

Maybe this is where you belong anyway. This, in a corner of the gym away from everyone else, doing arm stretches with your back to the bench. This, as you let loose a too-high practice ball across the court and feel the irritation like needles in your back. This, as you glare and glare and pretend that it doesn’t hurt that the game you’ve loved all your life is a team sport and somehow you just can’t seem to fit—

The coin flies into the air.

Feel yourself tense as the coin hits first the floor. Feel yours and the hearts of the hundreds surrounding you kick into high gear.

(Don’t think about the stares from afar or the whispers in the locker room. Don’t think about crowns or kings or what the word “genius” really means. Submerge, submerge, submerge.)

Feel the rubber of your sneakers skidding against the gym’s shiny hardwood flooring, your shoulders straining, your hands raw from hours and hours spent tossing. You were born for this; you were born to toss this very ball for this very game and you don’t need friendship or teammates, screw that, all you need is to win and you can make that happen because you’re the setter and you control the court and screw anyone who thinks otherwise and oh, now you’re fully submerged and you can’t see anything or hear anything except the one thing you’re alive for and that is to play volleyball—  
“Oi!”  
Kageyama looks up.

There he is, silhouetted against the net. A halo of gold and orange around his head, hands outstretched, a baby crow in flight. Beneath him, a net of hands spreads wide: Karasuno’s wings extending, always ready if either of them falls.

“KAGEYAMA,” Hinata Shouyou screams “I’M RIGHT HERE! TOSS TO ME!”

His eyes widen. The ball completes a perfect arc.

And he surfaces.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: I had originally planned this to be multichapter but I just really loved this passage on its own.   
> hmu @ sundersea.tumblr.com


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